Why Managed IT Services are Essential for Your Business Continuity Plan

Since time immemorial, no business has proved immune to either natural or technological disasters threatening to halt their operations. Some of the threats that businesses have to deal with include ransomware attacks, power outages, system failures, and natural disaster such as Hurricane Matthew that swept over five countries in late 2016 leaving hundreds of businesses in ruins.

While most businesses might be torn in between engaging their in-house IT teams or outsourcing to a third party whenever disasters strike, the former has often turned out ineffective. According to https://jigtechnologies.com/managed-it-services/, managed services accelerate your business continuity plans whenever calamity run down your systems or wipe out your data centre in the following ways:

Access to robust threat and risk analysis

The various potential threats facing a business usually evolve over time and so should the disaster recovery plan. As a result of focusing on a single or narrow business environment, an in-house IT team might overlook certain vital factors while running their regular business risk assessments.

On a different note, most managed IT services providers pass the test of experience when it comes to laying down and implementing DR procedures affecting different business environments. Coupled up with their invaluable experience are their interactions with the ever-unrolling information technology risks. Managed It providers, therefore, have up to date contingency plans in dealing with any possible internal or external threats.

Frequent testing and maintenance of the DR plan

Apart from laying down a workable backup and recovery strategy to ensure business continuity, the greatest responsibility lies in regularly testing the laid down disaster management protocols in the plan. A business that doesn’t regularly experiment with its disaster recovery plan risks running into turmoil when the forecasted risks finally take place since they DR team might be unable to react to the prevailing circumstances promptly.

Since your internal IT team might be preoccupied with other responsibilities, an MSP comes in handy to periodically test and maintain your disaster recovery plan. This not only gives room for more creative discoveries to dealing with the identified IT risks but also saves on the costs arising from upgrading the already existing contingency plans.

24/7 availability to combat any arising threats

Before the Hurricane Matthew halted down business operations across five countries in September 2016, a few disaster recovery companies came out to freely help businesses backup their data in an effort to ensure business continuity even after the disaster struck. Consequently, the businesses that took advantage of these services were up and running within the shortest time possible.

Various studies have indicated that companies that don’t deploy managed IT services encounter enomorse losses compared to those that do when different disasters such as ransomware attacks occur. This can be attributed to the fact that the former receive an immediate response with a clearly laid out plan on how to restore business operations within the shortest time possible.

Overly, as a result of their 24/7 availability, managed IT services providers adequately prepare before the turn of a calamity, giving them an upperhand in quickly restoring the most vital wings of a business operation.